Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Pine sticks are rifles and pinecones are grenades
Everything else is dynamite
Dynamite
- My brother hits me hard with a stick
- so I whip a choke chain
- across his face. We’re playing
- a game called Dynamite
- where everything you throw
- is a stick of dynamite,
- unless it’s pine. Pine sticks
- are rifles and pinecones are grenades,
- but everything else is dynamite.
- I run down the driveway
- and back behind the garage
- where we keep the leopard frogs
- in buckets of water
- with logs and rock islands.
- When he comes around the corner
- the blood is pouring
- out of his nose and down his neck
- and he has a hammer in his hand.
- I pick up his favorite frog
- and say If you come any closer
- I’ll squeeze. He tells me I won’t.
- He starts coming closer.
- I say a hammer isn’t dynamite.
- He reminds me that everything is dynamite.
The Raft
- He baits the hook with an Indian Paintbrush petal,
- lets out the line, reels, traps it with his thumb pad.
- October. Powder on the peaks. We float on a raft
- lashed together with a loose weave of duct tape and rope.
- I paddle us forward with a cottonwood branch,
- my leg in the water for a rudder, trying to hold us close
- to the darkness of the drop-off where the trout go
- to stay cool in the afternoons. Later we’ll make a fire
- and cook our catch with blueberries gathered frozen
- from the cirque above the tarn. We’ll blow on the coals.
- We’ll check for tenderness. We’ll add ash in place
- of salt. But for now I’m watching the sunlight
- bounce off the surface and shimmer in the shadow
- under my brother’s hat. The way he plays the line.
- The way he lets it troll behind us. The way the trout
- cloud our wake and flick their rainbowed sides.
- I’m torquing my leg underwater. I’m turning us back
- toward the darkness we’ve drifted away from.
After Fighting
- Sometimes my brother and I let go
- of rage and snuck in the garage to cut
- fistfuls of beef from the chest freezer,
- then lay side by side in the pines waiting
- for animals to come. We didn’t speak.
- Hardly even breathed as we played
- dead on the rust-colored needles,
- the clods of meat cupped loosely
- in our upturned palms. And if we waited
- long enough, if we let the clods thaw
- and seep their blood-deep sweetness,
- sometimes a chipmunk slunk up
- and nuzzled into our isthmus, crossing
- timidly from his hand to mine,
- mine to his, chewing. Its hunger
- like an invisible line strung between us.
Anders Carlson-Wee
Anders Carlson-Wee is the author of forthcoming The Low Passions (W.W. Norton, February 19, 2019), which includes the poems that appear here. You can order his book and explore more of his work online at: www.anderscarlsonwee.com.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Pine sticks are rifles and pinecones are grenades
Everything else is dynamite
Pine sticks are rifles and pinecones are grenades
Everything else is dynamite
Dynamite
- My brother hits me hard with a stick
- so I whip a choke chain
- across his face. We’re playing
- a game called Dynamite
- where everything you throw
- is a stick of dynamite,
- unless it’s pine. Pine sticks
- are rifles and pinecones are grenades,
- but everything else is dynamite.
- I run down the driveway
- and back behind the garage
- where we keep the leopard frogs
- in buckets of water
- with logs and rock islands.
- When he comes around the corner
- the blood is pouring
- out of his nose and down his neck
- and he has a hammer in his hand.
- I pick up his favorite frog
- and say If you come any closer
- I’ll squeeze. He tells me I won’t.
- He starts coming closer.
- I say a hammer isn’t dynamite.
- He reminds me that everything is dynamite.
The Raft
- He baits the hook with an Indian Paintbrush petal,
- lets out the line, reels, traps it with his thumb pad.
- October. Powder on the peaks. We float on a raft
- lashed together with a loose weave of duct tape and rope.
- I paddle us forward with a cottonwood branch,
- my leg in the water for a rudder, trying to hold us close
- to the darkness of the drop-off where the trout go
- to stay cool in the afternoons. Later we’ll make a fire
- and cook our catch with blueberries gathered frozen
- from the cirque above the tarn. We’ll blow on the coals.
- We’ll check for tenderness. We’ll add ash in place
- of salt. But for now I’m watching the sunlight
- bounce off the surface and shimmer in the shadow
- under my brother’s hat. The way he plays the line.
- The way he lets it troll behind us. The way the trout
- cloud our wake and flick their rainbowed sides.
- I’m torquing my leg underwater. I’m turning us back
- toward the darkness we’ve drifted away from.
After Fighting
- Sometimes my brother and I let go
- of rage and snuck in the garage to cut
- fistfuls of beef from the chest freezer,
- then lay side by side in the pines waiting
- for animals to come. We didn’t speak.
- Hardly even breathed as we played
- dead on the rust-colored needles,
- the clods of meat cupped loosely
- in our upturned palms. And if we waited
- long enough, if we let the clods thaw
- and seep their blood-deep sweetness,
- sometimes a chipmunk slunk up
- and nuzzled into our isthmus, crossing
- timidly from his hand to mine,
- mine to his, chewing. Its hunger
- like an invisible line strung between us.
Anders Carlson-Wee
Anders Carlson-Wee is the author of forthcoming The Low Passions (W.W. Norton, February 19, 2019), which includes the poems that appear here. You can order his book and explore more of his work online at: www.anderscarlsonwee.com.
Comments